


Starlight

by CyrenKnight



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, Unicorns, unicorn riku
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 11:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20435231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyrenKnight/pseuds/CyrenKnight
Summary: Sora, a princeling belonging to the House of Lions, is in love. But being in love is different than loving something, and unicorns in magical forests are different than attractive boys found in their place.





	Starlight

Everyone in all of Radiant Garden knew only children could see magical creatures. But magical creatures were only drawn to those who were pure of heart, child or not. As children got older, they killed things to eat, made love to start families, they left behind toys for forlorn adulthood.

Magical things were a thick vein into the universe that many wished to make gush forth and were hunted because of it. So children were often tricked into adulthood early, either to protect the creatures or to help capture and kill them. Only heartless monsters and nobodies desperate for titles would do such a thing. They were endangered, therefore the woods in territory owned by the House of Lions was declared a sanctuary.

The thicket behind the castle suffocated from being pressed so close to the enchanted woods, like lovers in bed during the snowfall. The youngest little princeling from the House of Lions adored all of her splendors and inhabitants. Splendors didn’t mean safety, but innocence meant invincibility.

“C’mon, Kairi!” Sora insisted, ever eager to show her off to the forest. Kairi was a princess from the House of Bluebirds, left to the safety of the Lions. They had necklaces fashioned out of the tails of the stars that fell out of the sky on the day they were both born. They both carried the exuberance of summer babies, delighting rooms they stumbled into.

“Sora, we’re not supposed to be out here—Aqua will get mad again!” Kairi reminded, Aqua’s title of captain abandoned back in the safety of the training barracks.

“Not if she doesn’t find out,” Sora reminded, his lapel buttons glimmering in the forever dusk of the enchanted forest. “And I told you,  _ it looked at me! _ ” Sora was ardent in his reminder compared to his initial hushed realization.  _ It looked at me—it looked at me.  _ He’d whispered for weeks, a secret that clotted inside of his heart. He had to remove it, had to share it.

He stumbled through foliage that was as tall as he was, brushing it aside and bumbling about so intensely it was a wonder anything ever stayed to let him look at it at all. Sora easily got twisted around in the maze of familiarity, Kairi clinging to his hand to make sure they were at least lost together.

“Sora…” She mumbled softly. “We should go back.” Time may have halted inside of the forever dusk, but it marched on like a call to war outside of it. Sora furrowed his brow, trying to see with his eyes and nothing but. He’d seen it. It had  _ looked at him _ . He wanted to look again.

“Hold on. Um…this way,” he decided, turning her around once more. Sora couldn’t quiet placed words to it, but there was now a gentle tug, red veins of fate pulsing and stretched out to eternity. He was trying to follow it, to see where the other end of his life led.

The vibrant orange grass easily separated for his hand, Sora halting immediately at the milk-moon color before him.

“...Sora?” Kairi called softly. “Sora—” She tried again, interrupted by a shushing. Sora inhaled deeply, adoration tinged with longing finding his features like slowly melting wax, gradually, until there was nothing else left but those feelings.

“ _ Unicorns _ ,” Sora explained in an exhale that felt like letting go of his fate string. He’d found it again. The same unicorn with its iridescent horn and muscled calves with its coat glistening like undisturbed snow. It’s eyes were like a rock he’d found in Venuts’ room once. He’d told Sora it was enhydro crystal, water trapped in brilliance for eternity. What Sora wouldn’t give to be the water. He wondered what he’d look like reflected out of unicorn iris.

Sora let his hand slip from Kairi’s, too intent on watching the unicorns grazing. He quietly approached as Kairi kept herself hidden, terrified Sora would be hurt because of her or worse, himself. Unicorns could supposedly grant wishes, heal any wounds,  _ run someone through and leave them dying _ . Sora had a knack for finding himself around dangerous things.

“Sora,” She whispered in warning, Sora pulling an apple out of his jacket.  _ A snack _ , he’d told her, but never did he say it was for himself. He quietly held it, moved like a gorgon statue in its final moments. Two unicorns looked up and fled, the one Sora had been approaching kept grazing, not bothering with him.

Sora got so close he could throw himself onto it, grip its mane and rush back to the stables—but Sora had never considered that. He just desperately wanted to make friends, to say he was close with a unicorn.

The unicorn looked up. It’s tail swayed. It looked at Sora— _ it looked at me _ —then the apple.

“Uh…hi…Riku…” He mumbled softly, having thought long and hard about a name. Important and precious things should have names. Babies and flowers and jewels had names. The unicorn ignored him and bit the apple in his hand, teeth grazing his palm.

Sora slowly turned his palm upright, fingers splayed as if trying to catch rays of sunlight like spidersilk between them. The unicorn looked up at Sora, it’s mane falling into an eye, as it chewed. The horn brushed his fingertips—

“Sora! Kairi!” Aqua. The unicorn darted away, fleeing into the underbrush at the sound of her voice, a violent jerk to Sora’s heart after it. He wouldn’t call out for it to stay, but it took everything in him not to rush off after it.

“There you are, we’ve looked everywhere for you! You know you’re not supposed to be out here,” she reminded, snatching Sora up and throwing him over her shoulder, Kairi’s hand in hers.

“But, Aqua—!”

“No buts! Come on, before Ven gets stuck in the crawl space again looking for you two there.”

#

Sora gave a sigh, deep and empty, the last breath of a man before he died. He slid away from the table, hoping to find his wandering thoughts. Instead, he found Aqua.

“Hey, Aqua?” He sat himself down at her feet, a spellbook in her hand.

“Hi, Sora. Is something wrong?” He hummed, unsure but also unaware of what questions to ask to figure out what was wrong. He pressed his cheek, squishy and sticky, to her knee.

“Aqua, what’s love?”

“Love?” Aqua balked. “Well, did you ask Terra?”

“Terra said love was when you’d do whatever you have to so you could be strong and protect what matters,” Sora answered, Aqua’s eyes softening.

“And Ven?” she asked, closing her book and threading her fingers through his hair.

“Ventus said it’s when you let your guard down because you trust someone not to hurt you.” Aqua hummed, a smile blooming on her face. Kairi had told her he’d taken her to see the unicorns, a precious and the rarest thing ever seen among children.

“Well you have their answers, why are you asking me?”

“Because neither of those feel right,” Sora admitted, letting out another sigh the universe swept away along with stardust.

“Love, huh? Hm, let me think…To me, love is doing something you don’t like because it will keep someone safe or make them happy. Sometimes those choices are so hard that it’s a wonder anyone ever makes them. Sometimes they’re easier—like eating your veggies.” Aqua teased, picking him up and pinching his cheek.

“I eat my veggies!” Sora insisted, pushing her away.

Aqua ignored him, pulling him back into her lap. “Why are you asking? Do you think there’s someone you love?”

“Um…Yeah...But you can’t tell, okay?” Sora looked as though she’d already told on him, heartbroken and riddled with woes.

Aqua held out her pinky. It wouldn’t be hard to guess who considering how often he spent time with her. “Promise.”

Sora locked his pinky with hers, hesitating and glancing around the room for prying ears. “I…I think…I love the unicorn in the woods.”

“ _ A unicorn _ ?” Aqua didn’t know what else to say. He was still young and he would learn to express the difference between love for animals and love for people as he got older, but saying it like that sounded as if he loved the unicorn the way she had anticipated him saying he loved Kairi.

“Yeah! He’s really pretty and soft-looking and he eats the apples I bring him! And he  _ looked at me _ , Aqua! And the one time I fell asleep in the forest he laid down across from me and—”

“You fell asleep in the  _ woods _ ?” That suspiciously reminded her of the time he said he fell asleep in the garden, even though they’d checked the garden.

“Okay, but Aqua—but Aqua, you’re not listening.” Sora pressed his tiny hands to her face, forcing her to look into his marvelous sky cast eyes. “The unicorn. The  _ unicorn…! _ ” he whispered in awe, as if it would appear in the reflection his merriment cast. She couldn’t bring herself to be mad, so she sighed.

“Sora…” She quietly held his hand in hers. He was so small—he needed protecting. If she couldn’t keep him out of the forest, her only other option was protecting the forest. “That unicorn lives in a different world than little princes do. You may love him, but there’s a line that normal people can’t cross when it comes to magic.”

“What do you mean?” He needed to be protected. His heart and his body  _ needed  _ to be protected.

“I…I just mean…” Aqua couldn’t bring herself to tell him that unicorns didn’t fall in love with little princes. “You know how Terra and Ven and I gave you different definitions of love?” Sora nodded. “Well, it’s kind of like that. There’s lots of different ways to love things and other people.”

Sora stared at her for a long moment, brow furrowed. “...I don’t get it,” he finally admitted.

“...Nevermind.” She kissed his forehead. “Just...don’t tell anyone else about the unicorn, okay? We want to keep it safe and there are mean people who would want to hurt it.”

“I promise.”

#

When Sora was sent away from home and the forest he loved with his whole heart to train and study to be a proper prince, he cried. When Donald and Goofy told him they’d need to hunt for their weekend dinners, he cried again. When he finally came home after ten years, he took one look at the forest and cried so hard he fell asleep before dinner, his third favorite meal of the day.

Adulthood loomed over him like a shadow, a beast of a man with no heart. He went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned and kicked and groaned and huffed and—he got up out of bed.

Hunting had taught him how to listen for guards and sneak out of the castle without being caught. The woods were ever familiar, the forever dusk a comfort that released the vice over his heart. Hunting had taught him to be quiet, to not bumble through the trees and what signs to look for to find certain animals. But there was a pinprick of pain like a needle to his heart, threading string dyed red as he tried to find the memorized, familiar tug to it from when he was a child. His head said to hunt tracks, his heart said to just walk. 

He did a bit of both, looking for signs of something else having passed through, looking for hoof prints, but turning away from them if his heart said the forest was lying. The forest had always protected the creatures in it from adults, no matter their intentions.

It hurt Sora to have to consider himself an adult. To everyone else, they insisted he was still young, but young wasn’t a child, it was just unknowledgeable, unpracticed. Unpracticed was repetition, but wasn’t the repetition of things lunacy? Maybe the moon was the real reason adults couldn’t see magical creatures anymore. They fell for her, letting her ebb and flow their internal tides.

Maybe that was the tug inside of Sora now, not whatever connection he’d had to the creatures before. After all, he hadn’t seen or heard a thing, since he’d entered the forest. He’d expected this, but it still hurt the prince all the same.

He gripped the front of his shirt, wondering if it would hurt less to pluck his heart from his chest and leave it somewhere in the forest. Maybe he should have done that as a child and preserved it in a concoction of wonder and delight. Would it have made him cruel now? Would his heart have sprouted something else? A new child born of ever afters and eternity? 

He couldn’t stop the tears from coming the way people couldn’t control when stars fell.

He clung so tightly to the front of his shirt that it wrinkled, hiccups and short gasping breaths muffling the sounds of the forest moving nearby. A rustle, a step, a soft tap to his shoulder. Sora jerked, a boy with moonlight hair down his back in front of him. Sora blinked away tears, the boy reaching out to brush one of them from his cheek. It glimmered like morning dew on his finger, the boy unsure of what to do with it.

“I’m sorry—I normally don’t—I mean I guess I kind of do? I’m Sora,” he introduced, trying to collect himself in front of the stranger who pressed his finger to his mouth, a stain of sorrow the only proof his tear had been there. “I was looking for a unicorn. Are there still unicorns here? There’s this one I met as a kid I always called Riku.”

The boy took Sora’s hand, inspected the palm of his hand as if trying to discern what the scrape in his lifeline meant. It was offputting how someone who looked like marble was warm. Sora inhaled softly. He pressed Sora’s hand to his forehead, palm covering his right eye. The uncovered eye was glittering fog, water trapped inside of a gemstone.

“...Riku,” the boy repeated.

“Right, Riku! The unicorn I’m looking for!” The corner of the boy’s mouth quirked up as he pulled Sora’s head away.

“...There’s still unicorns,” he promised, dipping into the underbrush.

“Really? Can you see them still? I’m scared I can’t see them anymore. I’ve seen hoofprints and stuff—a lot around right here actually—but I haven’t seen any of them yet.” He explained to the boy who moved as if he assumed Sora would match his pace, would mirror his movements.

“I can. Why do you want to see them?” He glanced over his shoulder, Sora stepping over a log and ducking under a branch.

“I just…I miss him…I know it might sound silly, but he was my friend, you know? I was sent away and I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” He paused, hand unsure if it should clench over his heart or reach for the branch in front of him. One morning Sora had woken up, things already packed for him. “If I don’t get to see him ever again, I at least want to say goodbye.” Goodbye to the unicorn, goodbye to childhood, goodbye to innocence, goodbye Sora, goodbye.

“Unicorns are smart and serious. They don’t play around with humans like fairies. But if you’ve seen one long enough to miss it, then you must be a really good person, Sora.” He turned to him, taking his hand to trace the head and heart line on his palm. “How were you going to say goodbye?”

“That’s…a good question.” Sora admitted. “I think…I think if I could still see him, I might want to run away.” But a prince could never run away, not from responsibilities or people who loved him. But it was an idea he could entertain all the same. “But if I couldn’t…then I guess goodbye would have been the last time I saw him.” He’d given the unicorn a ginger gold apple before he was sent away. The apple was an off-yellow almost cream color that he felt suited it.

The boy’s lips quirked up, but he didn’t say anything. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, then let go of his hand. Kisses came with implications of hellos and goodbyes. Sora’s heart jerked after the boy and told Sora that he should follow him, tell him to stay. Goodbye fluttering heart, goodbye. He’d leave it with the beautiful boy in the woods who could still see unicorns.

“If—if you see him…if you see Riku, can you give him this?” Sora pulled the ginger gold from his pocket, offering it to the boy. The boy took it from him, inspecting it.

“Yellow…” He mumbled, as if the word meant more than a color, as if it meant more than twilight skies and memories faded around the edges. “This one was the best.” Unicorns were smart. If Sora couldn’t see unicorns anymore, then maybe he could see a boy.

“...Riku?” Sora asked hesitantly.

The boy bit the apple.

Unicorns don’t fall in love with little boys. Sora pressed his hands to his face, warm like when he spent all day outside. As a child, Sora had just wanted to be friends. But he was  _ beautiful  _ and  _ he’d kissed Sora _ and maybe not-unicorn-boys could fall in love with not-little-boys.

“I, um, I gotta go back so Aqua doesn’t get mad. But I’ll be back—if you want. I mean cuz I want. To come back I mean. I, um. Yeah.” He gave the boy a curt nod and bumbled through the woods like a common bear, eager to get into bed and press his pillow to his face.

He needed to tell Aqua—but he’d already told Aqua he was in love with the unicorn when he was a child. But this was different, wasn’t it? Loving a unicorn meant feeding it apples and wanting to nap with it. Loving a not-unicorn-boy meant kissing and hand holding. That was different.  _ So  _ much different.

He wanted to tell Ventus, but Ventus would tell Aqua, even if it wasn’t on purpose. Maybe he’d just tell Kairi. Maybe he could bring her to meet his not-unicorn-boy and she wouldn’t tell on him.

Or maybe he’d fallen asleep somehow through all of his tossing and turning and was dreaming about attractive human boys again. He pinched himself, wincing as he trudged out of the forest. Not asleep meant kissing was real and kissing was for important lovers and  _ kissing _ —Sora had never been kissed before.

Were princes allowed magical kisses like the ones princesses were supposed to get too? Were princes allowed to fall in love with not-humans and make them humans too? Were princes allowed to fall in love with boys that looked like other princes?

Sora knocked on Aqua’s door.

“...Aqua? Aqua can we talk, please?” Her door opened, Sora’s face beat red and his hair knotted with twigs and leaves.

“Sora, what’s—were you out in the woods again?” She asked, plucking greenery from his hair as she ushered him into her room.

“Aqua…Love is wanting to protect things and letting your guard down and doing things you don’t want to, right? Well I want to protect everything in the forest and I let my guard down in the forest because I don’t think anything in there will hurt me and...and I don’t want to not be able to see unicorns anymore but I have to.” Sora sat on the edge of her bed as she kept pulling things from his hair next to him.

“Is this about the unicorn again? I know it’s hard to let go of things you love, Sora—”

“No, that’s different,” he interrupted, turning to face her better. “I love the unicorn like how I love Pluto or Lady or Oliver or Cleo. But…the  _ boy  _ in the woods is different.”

“... _ Boy _ ?” There weren’t supposed to be humans in those woods, disobedient princes aside.

“I think I’m in love with the boy in the woods, Aqua. He’s  _ beautiful _ . He’s like  _ starlight  _ and I was born when a star fell right? What’s that saying about fate and stars and stuff?” It was written in the stars, star-crossed lovers. There were many things romantic little boys could have remembered into their adulthood.

“...Should I save the scolding about you being in the woods again for later or for Terra?”

“Aqua—Aqua, you’re not listening. The  _ boy _ !” Sora flopped back onto her bed, throwing an arm over his eyes. It was him waxing about the unicorn all over again. “Aqua, I’m in love and it’s turning my brain into  _ mush _ .”

_ It looked at me; he kissed me. _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm likely going to make this into a multi chapter piece because the concept won't leave me


End file.
